Shop Windows to the Universe

Motivational Quotes For Everyone, Including Teachers and Students

Everyone needs some inspiration sometime! Here are some quotes that you may enjoy, or find useful in your work, play, or everyday life. The starting point for this was an energetic conversation on the ESPRIT listserve for Earth Science teachers. Enjoy!

We will soon be making it possible for you to submit your favorite quotes to the list. Note that all quotes will be reviewed for appropriateness before they are posted. We will also be adding a link for corrections, in case there are any mistakes in the quotes or attributions.

"Always and never are two words you should always remember never to use." Attributed to Wendell Johnson

"Everything that needs to be said has already been said. But since no one was listening, everything must be said again."Attributed to Andre Gide

"Never, never, never give up." Attributed to Winston Churchill

"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take." Attributed to Wayne Gretzky

"Even Einstein asked questions."Author unknown

"Success comes before work only in the dictionary."Attributed to Vince Lombardi

"If we intend to live on this planet, we truly need to know how it works." Thomas McGuire

"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up."Attributed to Thomas Edison

"Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."Attributed to Groucho Marx

"A calm sea does not make a skilled sailor."Author unknown

"When the time to perform arrives, the time to prepare has passed."Author unknown

"Chance favors the prepared mind."Attributed to Pasteur

"It is not the answers you give, but the questions you ask."Attributed to Voltaire

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." Attributed to Martin Luther King, Jr.

"You wouldn't send text messages or talk with your friends on facebook during a sports practice.... so why do it during your science practice? (homework!)"Author unknown

"Be in the moment! Focus on what you're doing, when you're doing it!"Author unknown

"I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you."Author unknown

"Only when something becomes a problem for "me" as one of my goal orientated actions, do I pause in full stride, as it were, in order to learn the competencies that I lack."Attributed to Klaus Holzkamp

"The greatness of a nation and it's moral progress can be judged in the way its animals are treated."Attributed to Ghandi

"Those who can, teach. Those who cannot, pass laws about teaching."Author unknown

"If by some fiat I had to restrict all this writing to a single sentence, this is the one I would choose: The summit of Mt. Everest is marine limestone."Attributed to John McPhee

"You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand."Attributed to Woodrow Wilson

"The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them."Attributed to William Bragg

"I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success... Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything."Attributed to Nikola Tesla

"The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not 'Eureka!' (I found it!) but 'That's funny....' "Attributed to Isaac Asimov

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe."Attributed to John Muir

"The greatest surprise of human evolution may be that the highest form of selfishness is selflessness."Attributed to Robert Ornstein

"I have yet to see any problem, however complicated, which, when you looked at it in the right way, did not become still more complicated."Attributed to Poul Anderson

"Nearly all of our disasters come from a few fools having the courage of their convictions."Attributed to Coventry Patmore

"The conservationist¹s most important task, if we are to save the Earth, is to educate."Attributed to Sir Peter Scott

"It is a puzzling thing. The truth knocks on the door and you say, 'Go away, I'm looking for the truth,' and so it goes away. Puzzling."Attributed to Robert Pirsig

"Science is made up of facts like a house is made of bricks, but a pile of facts does not make science nor a pile of bricks a house".Attributed to Henri Poincare

"If you cannot solve the proposed problem try to solve first some related problem."Attributed to George Polya

"Only ignorance! Only ignorance! How can you talk about only ignorance? Don't you know that it is the worst thing in the world, next to wickedness? And which does the most mischief heaven only knows. If people can say, `Oh! I did not know, I did not mean any harm,' they think it is all right..."Attributed to Anna Sewell

"It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it." Attributed to Upton Sinclair

"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."Attributed to Alvin Toffler

"Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example."Attributed to Mark Twain

"...human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe"Attributed to H.G. Wells

"It is in the unquestioned acceptance of things as they are now that keeps people from being creative; it is an attitude of mind rather than a lack of ability to create."Author unknown

"Now there is one outstandingly important fact regarding Spaceship Earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it."Attributed to R. Buckminster Fuller

"The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself."Attributed to Henry Miller

"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."Attributed to Charles Darwin

"Explore, and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatize or accept another's dogmatism."Attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson

"All of us could take a lesson from the weather; it pays no attention to criticism."Author unknown

"There are no passengers on spaceship Earth. We are all crew."Attributed to Marshall McLuhan

"A diamond is a chunk of coal that made good under pressure."Author unknown

"In the end,We will conserve only what we love,We will love only what we understand,We will understand only what we are taught."Attributed to Baba Dioum

"Where the world ceases to be the scene of our personal hopes and wishes, where we face it as free beings admiring, asking and observing, there we enter the realm of Art and Science."Attributed to Albert Einstein

"Facts do not cease to exist just because they are ignored."Attributed to Aldous Huxley

"Science is basically a matter of coming to grips with the real world. In accomplishing this, it's only rival has been evolution."Author unknown

"Give me a lever long enough, and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world."Attributed to Archimedes

"A good scientist (or student) knows the right answers. A great scientist (or student) knows the right questions."Author unknown

"The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer -- they think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer."Attributed to Ken Kesey

"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph."Attributed to Ken Kesey

"Humans live on earth, subject to nature's consent, revocable at anytime, without notice."Author unknown

"In the confrontation between the river and the rock, the river always wins...not by strength, but by perseverance."Attributed to Louis Agassiz

"Good science is done by being curious in general, by asking questions all around, by acknowledging the likelihood of being wrong and taking this in good humor for granted, by having a deep fondness for nature, and by being made jumpy and nervous by ignorance."Attributed to Lewis Thomas

"The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity."Author unknown

"If you think you are indispensable, put your finger in a bowl of water and watch the hole that remains when you remove it."Author unknown

"The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."Attributed to -Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science."Attributed to Edwin Powell Hubble

"Research is what I'm doing when I don't know what I'm doing."Attributed to Wernher Von Braun

"The important thing in science is not so much to obtain new facts as to discover new ways of thinking about them."Attributed to William Lawrence Bragg

"Science, in the very act of solving problems, creates more of them."Attributed to Abraham Flexner

"Science is simply common sense at its best."Attributed to Thomas Huxley

"We shall never cease from exploring, and when we return to the place from which we started, we shall know it for the first time."Attributed to T.S. Eliot

"Science is a simple as finding patterns in the world around you, nothing more nothing less."Author unknown

"There are risks and costs to a program of action, but they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction."Attributed to John F. Kennedy

"To see the Earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in the eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the Earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold - brothers who know now they are truly brothers." Attributed to Archibald MacLeish

"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed." Attributed to Francis Bacon

"We stand on the wrong side of the tapestry - a confusion of colors, knots, and loose ends. But, be assured, on the other side there is a pattern." Author unknown

"We don't inherit the Earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children." Attributed to David Brower

"Earth does not belong to man - man belongs to the Earth. Man did not weave the web of life; he is merely a strand in it; whatever he does to the web he does to himself." Attributed to Chief Seattle

"Be very, very careful what you put into that head of yours, because you will never, ever get it out."Attributed to Thomas Cardinal Wolsey

"Success comes before work only in the dictionary."Author unknown

"We travel together, passengers on a little space ship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil, committed for our safety to its security and peace, preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work, and I will say, the love we give our fragile craft. We cannot maintain it half fortunate, half miserable; half confident, half despairing, half slave to the ancient enemies of mankind, half free in a liberation of resources undreamed of until this day. No craft, no crew, can travel safely with such vast contradictions. On their resolution depends the survival of us all." Attributed to Adlai Stevenson

"The person who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the person doing it."Attributed to Chinese proverb

"The impossible missions are the only ones to succeed."Attributed to Jacques Cousteau

"We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology. This is a clear prescription for disaster." Attributed to Carl Sagan

"Be kinder than necessary, for everyone you meet is fighting some kind of battle."Author unknown

"You are capable of more than you know. Choose a goal that seems right for youand strive to be the best, however hard the path. Aim high. Behave honorably. Prepare to be alone at times, and to endure failure. Persist! The world needs all you can give."Attributed to E.O. Wilson

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."Attributed to Aristotle

"We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely."Attributed to E O Wilson

"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change."Attributed to Charles Darwin

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."Attributed to Martin Luther King, Jr.

"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little."Attributed to Franklin Delanore Roosevelt

"We still talk in terms of conquest. We still haven't become mature enough to think of ourselves as only a tiny part of a vast and incredible universe."Attributed to Rachel Carson

"We are just a speck, on a speck, orbiting a speck, in the corner of a speck, in the middle of nowhere."Attributed to Bill Nye